We’re walking in the air. ’Tis the season of interstate, mallow-topped, turkey-stuffed travel, and the U.S. transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, has launched a “civility campaign” demanding that all of us flying for the holidays (and beyond) respect “the dignity of air travel.” Alongside images of mid-century air commuters in pillbox hats, the video contains one of the best montages of modern-day discourteous behavior since they took Jerry Springer off the air—a wretchedly captivating cacophony of swearing, spitting, and scrapping. Duffy’s bugbears include the aforementioned fisticuffs, a lack of pleases and thank yous for staff, and the reluctance of current passengers to help the aged, the infirm, and the pregnant. (The jury’s still out on whether saying “quiet, piggy” to a journalist on Air Force One meets his civility criteria. Ahem.)
I can’t help thinking about the myriad plane etiquette infractions that didn’t make his hit list. Bare feet—in any context outside of a beach, really—are a major violation, as is applause on safe landing. Reclining your chair on flights under three hours is just plain rude. A neck pillow always makes you look like a loser: pay your way to the lie-down part of the plane, or stay awake for the ride. It’s worth saying here that the person in the middle seat gets both armrests—no questions, no notes.
Standing on business over on Fox, travel tyke Duffy also suggested we “maybe go back to an era where we didn’t wear our pajamas to the airport,” encouraging us to strut the tarmac runway as if it were a fashion one. Personally, I think we deserve the comfort that only jersey provides: I’m all for wearing whatever you want, whatever the situation. The rules of appropriate attire, of fashion itself, are made to be… if not broken, then adapted to modern living. We can easily get stuck in a judgmental cycle of what’s appropriate to wear—what’s too plain for the plane, too quirk for work, too tarty for the party. So wear white after Labor Day. Wear pajamas on the flight. Dress for the seat you paid for.
At the same time, I keep reminiscing about a time when air-flight meant something. I know there’s a trend for raw-dogging your flight like an airborne caveman, but a more classic way of taking to the skies still appeals to me. Take us back to a time of un-cellophaned sandwiches cut into triangles, of fedora-clad mad men, of a little ashtray in your armrest, all of us mile-highnesses dressed in our best. I don’t really want to see the stewards in Skims, the pilot in Juicy Couture.
Obviously with Trump’s campaign, there’s a glaring push, as ever, towards conservative values and a romanticized vision of a bygone era. Of suitcase-d husbands, of tiny-framed trad wives, of natural blondes and their “great genes.” I’m not saying we should all be brawling on the Boeings, but perhaps we should take a beat to question the government’s motives for encouraging greater courtesy on board. There’s this faint aroma around the video. It smells of a society where we all know our place and behave—of compliance, of obedience, of not challenging the status quo. The Trump administration is taking extreme measures to try and stop active protest, retaliation, reprisal, and it’s seeping in relatively un-extremely at ground level.
Though maybe I’m reaching by talking of it as a symptom of systemic societal control. Saying thanks for my Sprite doesn’t mean I’m living inside 1984. I’m going to just say thanks for my Sprite and be a quiet piggy in my seat. And most importantly? Even if these are the first throes of a more controlling era, people keeping their feet in their shoes on the plane is something we can all give thanks for this holiday season.